The Iron Dome for America

"One benefit of President Trump's return to power is that fresh thinking is sweeping through a stultified federal government. A welcome example is his desire to make the U.S. homeland safer from missile and nuclear attacks.

This has received little press attention, but on Monday Mr. Trump issued an executive order titled "The Iron Dome for America." The order instructs new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to submit to the White House within 60 days a "reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield."

The order goes on to list the elements that should be part of this architecture, including plans "against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries." Mr. Trump wants plans for deploying new sensors for tracking missiles, including in space, as well for the "development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors," and more.

This has the potential to be a great leap forward on defense. Most Americans don't realize how vulnerable the U.S. homeland is these days, as missile and other technologies improve and proliferate. Gone are the days, going back to the early 2000s, when the U.S. had to worry mainly about a rogue North Korea firing an ICBM at California. Hypersonic weapons that China and Russia have today could strike the U.S. with a warning of only a few minutes. This is far more worrisome than climate change.

Apart from 40 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and four in California, the U.S. relies for deterrence on its second-strike nuclear capability. Mr. Trump's order wants a plan to buttress that too.

But, as in the Cold War, a second strike doesn't protect the Americans who would have already died in a missile attack. Deterrence is enhanced if an adversary contemplating a first strike can't be confident its attack will get past U.S. anti-missile defenses. That's why Ronald Reagan proposed his famous Strategic Defense Initiative that was never implemented but helped to convince the Soviets that they couldn't win a technology race.

Mr. Trump's analogy to Israel's Iron Dome isn't the best because that shield defeats only short-range missiles up to 70 kilometers. But Israel has other aerial defense layers such as David's Sling, Thaad and the Arrow system. This defense network has worked beautifully to protect Israel's urban and military centers from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian attacks.

The U.S. would need a much larger system to cover the continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska and its territories. But technology has advanced a great deal since the 1980s, especially in space sensors, software for detection, and better interceptors. Directed-energy laser weapons have also advanced.

None of this will be cheap, and Mr. Trump will have to seek much more than the $10 billion or so a year that the U.S. now spends on missile defense. He'll also need champions in the Pentagon and Congress to push it through a bureaucracy that would prefer to spend on other things. But the first step is admitting the vulnerability and laying out a plan to address it -- and kudos for Mr. Trump for doing so." [1]

This is an interesting idea. Let us explore the situation when such a function could be used. It means WWIII with nuclear components, with a high probability of all humanity dying out. Serious thing. Could it make sense in such conditions to explode some nuclear devices in space to clear all those sensors out? In such a scenario all those expensive sensors don’t make much sense.

 

1. The Iron Dome for America. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 Jan 2025: A14.